Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Rangers took another step toward oblivion last night with a listless 2-1 loss to the hapless St. Louis Blues. There is that 2-1 score again. There are only eight teams in the NHL who have given up more goals than the Blues yet the Rangers could only get one and it was by Lauri Korpikoski (6). The Rangers have now one win in their last nine games and are 0-6-1 in their last seven on the road.

Despite the nonsense spewing from players and coach that their play improved, the Rangers were terrible. Improved? They were wiped out by a good team, the Flyers, the day before and were eked out by a terrible team, the Blues. For some strange reason coach clueless called a timeout at 10:25 of the second period and two seconds later Carlo Colaiacovo scored off of a faceoff on a shot that Lundqvist seemed to go down too soon. If this was a turn around game how come the Rangers got all of four shots in the third period and all of twenty for the entire game? How come?

But the wagons have been circled around coach clueless and it is almost unanimous among the drive-by media that coach clueless is blameless for this debacle. It must be Prucha's fault. Anyhow, media or no media, the die will be cast Wednesday night at home against the Islanders. Maybe clueless can resurrect the ghosts of Beukeboom, Leetch, Messier, Larmer and Kocur to pull out the miracle on 33rd Street. A loss to the Islanders will surely force "the faithful" to change the Potvin chant to Renney or Sather or both. But then again who knows. It can't be coach cluelesses fault, it must be the ghost of Denis Potvin.

3
comments:

Section 335
said...

I gave up on the coach a long time ago. Now, so has the team. Blame Sather all you want - but he has put together a fair amount of talent. Gomez and Drury have talent. Redden does too. However, they are not worth what they were paid for what we are seeing on the ice. Fixing that is what the coach is supposed to do - not Sather.

Also the coaches job is the power play. Sather does not run the power play. With above average talent we should have an above average - not the worst.

Sather knows that this team does not have the talent to go far in the playoffs. He hoped the salary cap would keep going up and next year we would land a sniper. He hoped that the power play would have been fixed by Redden. Instead, this team will be a victim of a down economy as well as the wrong coach for the horse in the stable.

The power play has been like the canary in the coal mine. It has been dead for two years. So it has been clear that Renney has not been doing his job for two years.

Just making the playoffs is now the promised land for both Renney and Sather. They must be looking at every angle to see what they can to scratch out a path into the playoff. Avery can't hurt at this point. What's the downside of teammates getting upset with him. Will they stop playing more than they have already?

Everything is coming apart. Who can you count on in this organization?

The Ranger Pundit

I'm Mike Savino, the Ranger Pundit. I have been a NY Rangers fan since the 1937 - 1938 season. The first game I saw in person was in 1943 against the Blackhawks. My biggest disappointment was the '49-50 season and our loss to the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals.